Recipe -- Beef Turnip Soup

Dear Korean,

I am looking for a recipe for a Korean soup that's got a clear broth and is made with turnips. Do you know what I am talking about?

Amy P.


The Korean sure does. Here is the recipe for Korean style beef turnip soup. (소고기 무국.)

Ingredients:

Korean turnip (무), which looks like this:

Beef -- head meat flank (양지머리)
Korean leek (대파), which looks like this:

Pressed garlic
Soup soy sauce (국간장)
Sesame oil
Salt, pepper

Notes about the ingredient -- The highlight of this soup is Korean turnip, which adds a distinctively clean taste to the beef broth. You absolutely must get a Korean turnip for this dish -- otherwise it's not the same food. There might be room for some compromise with other ingredients. Koreans generally use head meat flank for making beef broth, but a generic beef stew meat will do in a pinch. If Korean leek is hard to find, regular scallion is serviceable. For seasoning, freshly pressed garlic is almost always better than any other form of garlic, but minced garlic from a jar is ok if that peeling and pressing garlic is too much of a pain. "Soup soy sauce" is different from your regular sushi restaurant soy sauce -- it has darker color and much stronger flavor. Regular soy sauce is serviceable, but it is the small things that will push a dish from "good enough" to "excellent". (Or, in the Korean's mind, from "incorrect" to "correct".)

Cooking:

- Soak the beef in water until the meat bleeds out.
- Cut the turnips into large chunks. Slice it first into an inch-thick rings, then quarter the rings.
- Cut the leeks into large chunks, about an inch long.
- Put cut leek and pressed garlic (adjust amount according to preference) into a pot. Add water and boil in high heat.
- When the broth comes to boil, add the beef and cut turnips. Then lower the heat and simmer, until the beef is fully cooked and the turnips are soft. (Note: adding the beef in cold water to boil muddies the broth. For the clear broth, the beef needs to be without any blood, and then added when the water is boiling.)
- Take out the beef and turnip. Shred the beef with hand along the grain. Cut the cooked turnip into bite-sized slices. Season the beef and cut turnip with salt, pepper and sesame oil. Adjust the amount of condiments according to preference.
- Put only the broth to boil one more time. Season with salt and soup soy sauce. Watch out against over-using soup soy sauce; it has a very dark color, and might make the soup appear unappetizingly dark if overused. (Remember that the whole point of this soup is to have a clean flavor -- the looks must complement that.) Rely on salt for most of the salty flavor, and use the soup soy sauce for umami.
- In a bowl, add the seasoned meat and turnip with the broth. Serve with steamed rice.

When finished, the final product should look like this (except this one cut the leeks smaller than what the Korean is used to -- which does not make a big difference other than aesthetics):

맛있게 드세요. (Bon appetit!)

-EDIT- Translation error was pointed out by commenter Ji Soo. 

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